friend of the built environment

David got me these for my birthday yesterday. I’m burning my way through them right now, appropriately, on Canada Day. It’s also my Mom’s birthday.
So far, these two quotes are what stand out for me. As a life-long Canadophile and now partnered with a fellow Canadophile, it’s tempting to quest for a day when these [...]

Yeah, I can’t seem to write much lately.
I’m taking pictures instead, for now. Maybe more text later.

I love this city…

Anatoly does a real good crystallization of a book I’ve struggled with for a while: The Lucifer Principle.

Something I was told today that struck a nerve: All fashion is usually based on the envy of saying “I’d look as good as him with what he’s wearing.”

From Sister Betty: “Yet, sometimes we fool ourselves thinking the next place will be sparkly-shiney. Pretty much nowhere is sparkly-shiney. Every place is just somewhere else.”

I need a full system map. There used to be a PDF version available at this URL but I cannot find it now. The not-to-scale hand schedules are laughably inadequate for traveling about the region. A full system map is a necessary part of any multi-modal transit operation.
I recommend that Port Authority offer system maps [...]

I’m slightly bothered by the fact that I’ve now seen two different cable operators in two different markets advertise “specials” where you can “lock in your rate for two years!”
I thought bandwidth was getting cheaper? Why would I lock in a rate since all market fundamentals tell me that the product’s price should go down [...]

James Howard Kunstler’s 1993 opus was ahead of its time.
Kunstler does a grand sweep of pretty much every topic that interests me, and it’s a big surprise to me more than anything that I failed to read this book until now. My favorite excerpt is one I read in the beginning of Chapter 11, which [...]

I’m a bit late to the punch, but I heard an interview with James E. McWilliams today on July 22’s edition of Q, and it reminded me why his his Forbes treatise bugged me so much last year.
James E. McWilliams is a hardcore liberal freemarketer, essentially a personification of The Economist, whose polemical arguments tend [...]

Thursday’s paper had two front-page items that spoke volumes to our city’s failure of foresight. The first was the Beltway headline, the second the “Dash Effect” teaser for Relish. They indicate that Winston-Salem has stepped up boldly with the development and transit solutions of the 1960s.
With the DOT rejecting its importance, property owners in dire [...]

Margaret Atwood was on Q this week and I hope to pick up her latest book this weekend. Brilliant lady, and I wanted to remind all of my earlier review of her last brilliant book, Payback, from the Massey Lectures.

I am really impressed with the upcoming iteration of Kindle. They’ve wittled the price down to $139 for wifi-only, which is a substantial price competition to the iPad. It even has a browser now. I really wonder what the bandwidth restrictions will be with the 3G versions with that particular feature, but either way, it [...]